


“Have you got any scars?”

by SunWeaver



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Blood, Caduceus centric, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Sibling bickering, body scars, fond memories, lazy kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:14:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26360062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunWeaver/pseuds/SunWeaver
Summary: Comfortably resting, one on top the other, legs intertwined together under the warm quilt, Caduceus’s fingers mindlessly follow the ridges and dimples of Molly’s scars. Neither thinking much of it, the crosshatches and pinches in the skin are a simple tactile feeling against the pads of Caduceus’s fingers. It does pose an interesting question to Molly that he must ask.
Relationships: Caduceus Clay/Mollymauk Tealeaf
Comments: 6
Kudos: 42





	“Have you got any scars?”

Caduceus stares up at the ceiling, heavily considering the question’s answer. As he looks back down onto the curious eyes fixed on him (could be looking at his lips, but that was difficult to tell when a tiefling lacks pupils), he gives a languid smile.

“I might,” He says, voice rumbling like thunder on a rainy night, “You can have a look if you’d like.”

A devious grin grows across Mollymauk’s lips. He is quick to start grooming through Caduceus’s pale fur, gently getting Caduceus to tilt his head side-to-side for closer examinations of his neck. Caduceus was delighted that Molly was so quick to take to this little game of “eye spy”. As Molly scanned over Caduceus’s chest and shoulders, he began the descent down one of his arms.

“ _Oh for fuck’s sake_ , how am I supposed to find anything on you? Pale and covered in fur? Just pick one,” Molly chides in jest as he is forced to push up against the grain of Caduceus’s fur.

“It’s not that much,” Caduceus chuckles back, “Though I guess my winter coat is starting to fill in.”

Molly tsks, tail whipping under the blanket as his patience runs thin reaching the tip of Caduceus’s fingers. Reaching Caducues’s left hand, Molly finds the first oddity. On the back of his hand, between his pointer finger and thumb, there’s a bump that is bald. For as much as they held hands, Molly is surprised he notices the detail now.

“ _Aha!_ What’s this?” Molly lifts Caduceus’s own hand back up to his face.

“This? I do believe I got that from a nasty spider bite in my youth.” Caduceus answers.

* * *

A young Caduceus pops his head out from some tall, overgrown bushes. His hair catches onto some of the branches which he needs to pull himself from with reckless abandon to whether the branch comes along with him or not. As he steps through this knee high grass, he makes another concerned call out, “Clarabelle??”

He feels that he has strayed quite far from their home now, which only worries him more about where his littlest sister has wandered off to. There was the deep, dwelling fear that she might be hurt now. Caduceus is beyond the point of caring where he stepped in these open toed shoes, he kicks through the dense brush and stumbles his way to another tree, “Clarabelle!?”

“ _Cahooses?_ ”

His heart leaps out of his chest, as Caduceus makes a mad dash to where he heard the lispy toddler speech, “ _Clarabelle!_ Where are you??”

“ _Cahooses_!”

He catches the pink mop of hair just under the shade of a fallen over tree, thankfully unharmed and all the more frightened by his uncharacteristic yelling than by being lost. Rushing over, he then scoops her up without a second thought and hugs her, finally feeling relief for the first time in the passed 20 panicked minutes.

“Clarabelle! _Oh thank you wild mother, thank you for keeping her safe,_ ” Caduceus hastily prays as he then props her against his hip to look her over, “You had me worried to death! Don’t run off like that, Belle!”

Clarabelle’s little chubby fingers are clasped together, “I’m sowwy, Cahooses…”

Caduceus’s worry is replaced with annoyance, but it is hard to be annoyed when dealing with his baby sister. She’s just too darn cute, “Hmph, apology accepted.”

He starts to pick branches from her hair, the two of them had run through some heavy brush to end up all the way out here. As his hand is lifted, Clarabelle brings up hers and opens them up, announcing to him “Bug!”

“Oh you got a-“ Caduceus expected a colorful beetle, as they were typically her favorite for their shiny carapaces, but instead she held a black spider with sharp legs a bulbous abdomen that bore an red hourglass symbol. His mouth was still open, voice caught in his throat as he tried to not make an attempt to scream.

* * *

“It wasn’t enough for it to bite me, but come to find myself later that night waking up from sleep in full body pain. Pounding headache, twisting stomach ache, arm tightening so bad. Aunt Corrin was quick to do away with whatever was afflicting me, but it still took me a few days to fully recover,” Caduceus brings his other hand over to touch the small bump left behind.

Molly winces, “Dreadful, all that from a little spider?” Pouting a lip at hearing that, Molly can’t help sympathizing for a young Caduceus having to be put through so much by such a small, stupid insect (an _arachnid_ but Molly hoped to insult that stinking spider) he takes Caduceus’s hand back to give a chaste kiss to it.

“Well, you found one of them,” Caduceus says with a smile.

Incentivized to hear more, Molly continues his search. Going down along Caduceus’s other forearm, there appears a scratch long since healed over, not a clean line as it appears to break half way in. It’s an impressive find given the fur does well to disguise it.

“I’ve seen cat scratches worse than this,” Molly teases as his finger traces the mark, “What gotcha here?”

“A gravestone,” Caduceus muses.

* * *

Calliope, as always, wanted to pick fights with her brothers. She had started to grow, and was starting to rise up to Caduceus’s shoulders. Colton had a good head start over both of them, so Calliope stopped challenging him as much. Leaving her no other options than to push Caduceus’s buttons.

With the task of cleaning gravestones on his plate for the afternoon, Caduceus was already on a short enough fuse as it stood. He was too keen to finish the chore and was dunking the scrub so harshly into the bucket that it splattered nearly half the liquid inside of it each time. The tombstone was a relatively new one, so washing it was not so necessary. He just needed to knock off the pollen and dust to collect in the crevices of the engravings and wipe down the sides.

When his hand went down to dunk more sudsy water, he found nothing but air.

Looking over, Caduceus was confused, then his eyes spotted a pair of feet. Eyes moving up to the grass stained knees, to the blooming overalls that loosely buttoned in the front and holding up the bucket to the side, then finally reaching that sly sister of his.

“Calliope.” Caduceus’s tone was already terse, “I’m busy. Go bother Colton and give me back the bucket.”

“Or what?” Calliope taunts as she lifts the bucket up by the bottom, holding it over her head.

“Don’t do it,” Caduceus says as he stands.

“Or _what?_ ” She insists as the bucket sways dangerously back behind her head, daring to tip out the liquid.

“I’m trying to work, Calliope! Give me the bucket!”

Before she gets to sneer at him again, he smacks at her with the wet rag. And while he calculated to reach up with his other hand to grab the bucket when making her flinch, the contents are then dumped out between them. Cold water splashes over Calliope’s head and onto Caduceus’s pants. He tries to reflexively jump out of the way, but losing balance has him comically falling back and slamming his arm against the edge of the stone.

* * *

“Our father had to pry us apart from one another. Both of us ended up having to scrub stones for the rest of the week,” Caduceus reminisces, “I’d manage to get Calliope back during that time by sneaking dirt into her bucket.”

Molly’s lips are pressing to the scar and Caduceus can feel a smile form before Molly pulls back to look at him, “ _Cheeky_!”

Caduceus simply shrugs, “I didn’t like wrestling much, so I sought out more pacifistic methods of getting her and Colton back.”

“Am I going to be able to find the one scar your brother Colton helped cause?” Molly jokes as he centers himself onto Caduceus’s chest.

“Oh, if you want, I can just tell you,” Caduceus says as he then lifts his hand and points down to his stomach.

When Molly’s eyes follow, he sees the slight bit of balding left in the area, this is less of a cut and looks to be in the shape of an oval. He tilts his head, trying to picture what small animal managed to make such a peculiar bite.

“It’s not so much he had anything to cause it, but it’s the one that has a story where he’s in it…”

* * *

Caduceus stays crouched down, as low as is possible for him, keeping a hooded lantern in one hand while the other holds a sharp knife. Never had he been one to join in these daring jaunts, but their father, Cornelius, was not about to bring his pregnant wife out with him to deal with potential intruders off the road from Shadycreek Run. So instead, he brought his two eldest sons, Colton and Caduceus.

They were big enough to hold their own, but that didn’t mean Caduceus felt fully prepared to be out here. So he was tasked with providing the light when needed.

Their father’s usual demeanor of being lackadaisical and jolly was completely removed, in its place was serious determination. He carried the family’s staff, holding a large chunk of jagged crystal at the end.

Between the two of them was Colton, who wore the same chest plating as Cornelius and carried a dagger. He looks expectantly to Cornelius, who is looking out over the brush at the source of mysterious voices being heard.

Cornelius’s hand was held up, keeping Colton and Caduceus steady from springing out. His eyes leave the brush to look at his sons, holding up two fingers and mouthing along with it.

Colton gives a curt nod. Caduceus gives an uncertain one.

After that, Cornelius brings both hands to his staff. As he steps forward silently, his sons watch his visage vanish before them.

Colton turns back to his younger brother and pats his shoulder, then gets up and vanishes similarly into the brush.

Now alone in this quiet, Caduceus looks at his knife. He was unlikely to do as much harm, but should it become necessary…

Then the first angry yell is let out, along with the agonized grunt of having a heavy staff bat at their head. In the sounds of struggle, Caduceus hears Colton yelp. He is up in a flurry, dropping the lantern to the wayside as he runs out and holds up his knife. He comes in totally unprepared for the scene: his father fighting to hold his staff over the windpipe of a fallen man while Colton was mid rolling out from underneath the other man who was pulling the tip of his spear out of the earth.

And it was that motion of the spear being pulled out that Caduceus made the mistake to be running forward. As he was immediately halted with a sharp gasp of air.

Colton took a running start, slamming into the spear wielded foe, and in a rather barbaric fashion, plunged his dagger into the space between the neck and shoulders. Ribbons of red coloring half Colton’s face and hair. Though it did the job and the body fell down lifeless before him.

Cornelius finally pulled himself off the other man, staff in hand and tapping the bottom to his chest. Encouraging flowers and mushrooms to claim this fresh form. Rooting him to the earth.

“Boys?” Cornelius says breathlessly, turning to his sons, “ _Oh Melora no-_ “ He runs over beside Colton, who is trying to prompt Caduceus to roll onto his back.

“ **Caduceus** , come on, let me see it,” Once words that were curious about seeing a bug that he kept hidden behind his back, were now sounding desperate and pleading.

The very thought of moving nearly made him want to vomit now, as even minute movements made the piercing end of this spear dig excruciatingly further in.

“ _Caduceus,_ ” Their father’s voice spoke, “Let go, I know it hurts, but you have to let it go. I promise to be quick.”

For as much as Caduceus wanted to obey, his body vehemently refused to listen. As Colton made an attempt to grab the handle, Caduceus took one hand off to grab viciously at Colton’s wrist and make a cry of pain.

“Just let us **help!** ” Colton, now frustrated, yells back at Caduceus.

“ **Colton.** ” Cornelius quickly scolds as he gets up and moves around to be in front of his younger son, seeing the beads of cold sweat forming on the young one’s brow.

“ _H-urts,_ ” Caduceus pants out, groaning after.

“I’ll be quick.” Cornelius reassures for a final time, looking to Colton then to hold his brother’s shoulder. As in the moment, Cornelius holds one hand over Caduceus and the other at the handle of the weapon, “I’m going to count, are you ready?”

Caduceus swallows dry, whimpering out.

Cornelius’s eyes look to the handle and then to Caduceus, “... One… _Two-_ “

There is a terrible rip, Caduceus gives a guttural sob as his father’s hand makes contact with his writhing hot body. And immediately flourishes with the calming salve of Melora’s magic.

* * *

“You poor thing,” Molly coos as his cheek rests to Caduceus’s belly, he’s almost lulled to sleep by Caduceus’s talking and warmth, but the story itself is too lively for him to shut his eyes all the way.

“Even though I had healed, I still got to have the next day off from doing any chores. Calliope wasn’t too impressed, but Colton was a bit nicer to me for the next couple of days,” Caduceus concludes to the story, “You found all of the ones with significant stories, the only one left that I know of is by my ankle, but it’s not that interesting. Was running through the rain and slipped on climbing a rock. Ended up only finding out about it when I got back inside and got speckles of blood on the cushion I was sitting on.”

Molly hoarsely chuckles and crawls his way back up to rest on Caduceus’s chest. Once again returning to the place he started, now much sleepier thanks to Caduceus’s calming voice.

“Next time, you’ll have to let me be the one asking you questions,” Caduceus says as his hand pets the back of Molly’s head.

He makes an amused noise, a hand comes up to cup Caduceus’s cheek, his thumb stroking against the scruff of his beard, “Good luck finding _any_ on me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Haven’t written in forever, and I don’t know if I plan to update anything I’ve already got posted. So here’s something small since my appreciation for the ship (and Caduceus in general really) has been reignited.
> 
> Feel free to ask me to add anymore tags that feel necessary to have!!


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